The ultimate non-cooking cooking guide

Coming to Stuttgart has definitely taught me how to feed myself. I cooked with the Singaporean boys the first couple of weeks then proceeded to just cook on own because they live 8 blocks away and when winter comes I'm not gonna run there and back for meals in the freezing cold.

This meant that after 2 weeks, I had to actually learn how to cook.

So the guys don’t really cook back home either, and for that 2 weeks, we were trying our best to cook. Though I personally was employing different tactics to try to cook by not cooking. 

So, although I am now currently on my way to being true chef and no longer need these tactics anymore, they were very useful for my survival during those 2 weeks, so I am going to kindly share them with you, and hopefully help a sad hungry soul out there earn (or non-earn) a happy tummy. Let’s go.


1)   Never cook alone.

This is the very first step that allows the rest of the steps to fall together in place. Always make sure you are cooking with somebody, so that if any disaster strikes, you never have to bear full responsibility for it. For instance,

Note how all personal pronouns used are shared and plural, and also how everything ends up in the guilt-free act of “laughing it off”.


2)   Ask if anyone needs help.

Never take charge. Immediately exalt everyone else into leadership by asking what you can do. All responsibility disappears from your hands like sand through your fingers. And since most people like to be in a position of authority, you have created a win-win situation. This is also to ensure that you always have something to do around the kitchen be it cutting some veggies, or cracking some eggs, or pouring some oil into the soup.

Being the delegated, you have no true responsibility over anything that goes wrong.

 

3)   Volunteer to taste the food.

Make the valiant sacrifice.


4)   Act like you want to do the dangerous things, like carry that heavy pot of rice off the stove.

Keywords are ‘act like’, because we all know that you are going to drop that pot of rice on the floor and lose your dinner AND your friends faster than you can say sorry. So offer to do it, but ultimately let your uncertainty shine through like diamonds so that you will eventually be asked to be taken over.

 

5)   WASH THE DISHES.

This is an essential skill for the non-cook who wants to cook, and also the most important step. If you do not fulfill this, nobody is going to want to cook with you again, rendering step 1 forever obsolete and henceforth the entire guide useless, and you can count on eating takeaways and raw ham the rest of your time in the hostel.


I hope this guide has been useful. Actually I'm pretty sure it is but if you disagree you should probably just learn how to cook and not blame me.

FLYING OFF IN A FEW HOURS!

Can’t wait to spend the rest of the year on exchange ahhhh

My Boyfriend is embarrassing.

So it was Hari Raya last week, and every year for Hari Raya, my friends and I go to Adnaan’s house to visit. This year, I brought Raph along and he was really excited about it because it was his first time going to someone’s place for Hari Raya, so he decided to wear this Malay outfit he bought ages ago but never really wore before.

  

When we reached Ad’s place, a whole ton of his visitors stared at us like we were some kind of hideous disease. Only my beautiful friends (like 6 of them amid the crowd) thought that it was sweet of Raph to dress up but it was quite a walk before I got to safety in their company.

 

And even though Raph’s outfit wasn’t exactly culturally accurate because he got the wrong sarong or something, Ad and his family really appreciated his effort and his mum even very bemusedly (and honestly) said that “he look like the satay seller.”

Here’s a photo of us by the way:

 ^Slightly blur, but you can see my ever so loving face very clearly right there.

Anyway while we are on the topic of dressing to embarrass, Raph and I went to the Adventure Cove water park at Sentosa a few months back, and you know how everyone visits water parks in nothing but their swimwear?

 

YEs because you totally have to protect your feet from the perilous GLASS SHARDS that litter the floors of all water parks.

I was in the car on the way there like:

 

But he insisted on doing whatever he wanted. Thankfully though, we went there when the place first opened so we pretty much owned the whole park and only a couple of people stared. But just as I decided that the number of people around were far too negligible to feel any form of humiliation, just as I was beginning to forgive him for his embarrassing behaviour,

 

 

And Raph has this weird habit also, of bringing one of those ‘uncle’ handkerchiefs around with him, like yknow the kind that old uncles bring around to wipe things in place of tissue paper? Yes he’s the youngest person I know who carries those around. And sometimes when he’s eating curry or anything that might dirty his shirt, he takes it out to save the day.

 *best if your hankerchief matches your shirt.

We were in a food court the last time this happened and I was dying in embarrassment as I ate because people would walk by and stare and think he’s crazy, but he wasn’t bothered at all because he was too busy being the happiest prata-eater on earth.

I have no idea how I am still so in love with the guy.

Random highlight of the day.

So I spent the afternoon chilling at Starbucks by myself today and as I was leaving, I noticed that the people at random tables would turn to look at me as I passed by them. Normally if this happens I get very scared because it’s like omg, is there something on my face??? Or is it that I didn’t zip my pants/bag or something because it’s usually things like that that make people stare.

But, I had no visible zippers on me, and they were staring me in the eyeee so there had to be something on my face. So I quickly rushed to the toilet to check if there was anything on it, but there was nothing.

So I concluded that I was probably just very pretty today.

This was me the last 2 weeks.

But it’s okay I’ve caught up with the world already I will tell you cool things very soon.

Red Bull gives me wings indeed.

Hello I disappeared for a while.

I was at ADM FOC’s seniors camp last week (actual camp is in 2 weeks. I am an OGL. I am very excited).




Anyway I’ll just tell you a random story now.

So on the 2nd night of the camp, we had to stay up into the night so the camp committee brought some red bull girls to come give us free sponsored red bull.

But no matter how sleepy I was, I wouldn’t drink it. I remember once when I had some caffeine in Secondary school, and suddenly I decided it would be fun to sneak around the school compound, ninja-ing past people like a secret spy agent. My friends were with me but somehow they just kept a distance and let me do whatever I wanted.

At the time of my high I thought I was hilarious. But now, I just hope that I was a very smooth spy and nobody saw my face or at least remembered it.

(I would give you more examples of stupid incidents but no.)

And because I so vehemently refused to touch the can, I was a ball of embarrassing because yes I forgot to add in that above picture that there were actually people around me (we were having a really long meeting).

I would try to get up now and then, but I would just fall back asleep, and I’m pretty sure I looked like a fool in those desperate attempts keep awake, because my friends were laughing.

I felt like a drowning cat, except there was no water.

It was so bad that I wondered how I was going to survive 5 days of the actual camp with little to no sleep. Whether I should just go ahead and spam caffeine the 5 days or not.

Then it hit me. That I should probably just go ahead.

Because it seemed that whether or not I drink it, I’ll still look stupid.

It was a difficult revelation to come to terms with but at least now I know why I’m always rather apathetic when something embarrassing happens to me.

My dog peed glitter.

So yesterday my family got home at night, and I saw that my dog peed and shat on his newspaper so I decided to go clean it up. But as I walked towards it, something sparkled.

I stared closer at his dried-up pee and realized there was glitter in it.

And it couldn’t have been that someone decided it was funny and threw glitter all over his pee as a joke because we weren’t home when he relieved himself, and plus the glitter was embedded into the newspaper with the pee in the shape of a puddle.

I tried to recall if I’d used glitter in any recent craft project or whatever because maybe he’d accidentally ingested it but no, the last time I took out my bottle of glitter was in January when we dressed Martin up as a mermaid at the Aquarium Park. And even if he ate glitter, it should be coming out in his poop right?

I’ll show you a picture.

Yes that’s what I said, I’ll show you a picture. I’m warning you ah don’t say I never. I’m warning you now. If you are afraid of pee don’t blame me if you scroll down and puke.

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This was taken with my phone. Okay I know most cameras don’t do justice to the shiny nature of glitter because it just becomes white specks, but yeah close enough.

So at first, I was really excited and had all these fantastical ideas about how my dog is slowly evolving into a unicorn and how I could totally use a unicorn as a pet like we could go on magical rainbow adventures together and other cool things like that

..but then I googled ‘my dog peed glitter’ and the results kinda burst my bubble.

They said that the glitter was actually crystals that formed when his pee dried up because it was too concentrated. They said if this carries on, my dog might be having UTI/kidney stones or something, which of course, freaked me out (though I have to say I was definitely more disappointed than anything else to find out that my dog wasn’t a unicorn after all).

But he’s fine today. In case you were wondering. All his pee puddles dried up glitter-less. I think he just didn’t drink enough water yesterday because all of us forgot to refill his water bowl when we went out in the morning.

Actually I believe he’s just okay because I made him pray with me after the incident.

And also because I force-fed him water a lot of times after that, like I would seize him prison-torture style and shove his face to his water bowl and make him lick it all up but it was all for his own good.